RECO HD REVIEWS
RECORD REVIEWS
Garden of Earthly Desire
Works by Lizo Lim , Sandro Gorli, Franco
Dona toni. Mauro Cord i, Gerard Brophy
Elision Ensemble, conductor Sandro Gorll
Ricordi CRMCD 1020
Total Playing Time: c . 70'
CD $26
Reviewed by Peter McCollum
The first th ing that struck me about this disc was the
beautiful qu ality of the sound in the opening oboe sol~ in
the first track, Liza Lim's Carden of Earthly Deslre .
Having become acquainted with th is piece through a tape
of a tape, I wasn't prepared for such an alluring presence
in the sound.
In fact the quality of record ed sound wh ich producer,
Riccardo Formosa, has achieved is indicative of the
impressive standard of professionalism of the whole disc
and of the Elision operation at the moment. While others
have whinged about funding - the ABC, the PAB and
others - Elision have gone out and made contacts, contracts,
and recordings with overseas bodies.
But perhaps the most important achievement of the
disc is that it
makes a major
work of Liza
Lim's
available
internationally
for the first
time (at least
as far as I am
aware) . With
the recent
commis sion
from the
Ensemble
Intercon-
tem pora in it
couldn 't have
come at a bet-ter moment. The work itself is a strikingly
original exploration of the erotic in sound, at times haunting,
bizarre, disturbing and funny. It confirmed absolutely my
growing hunch that Lim is one of the major young voices
in Australian music today. Let's hope Elision presses ahead
with this exposure for her music, perhaps with a recording
of Voodoo-Child which won a Sounds award last year.
There is male eroticism on this disc too in Gerard
Brophy's Shiver which sets one of Pietro Aretino's Sonetti
lussuriosi (1524) for soprano and eight instruments. Once
again the quality of the recorded sound gives a wonderfully
brittle edge. As Richard Toop's notes to this disc point
out, Brophy's music has shown a persistent preoccupation
with the pornographic in Western An (rather than the
erotic), as shown most extravagantly in the Seymour Group's
notorious performance of Flesh.
Shiver was dedicated to Donaton i on the occasion of
PAGE 44
his 60th birthda y and Donatoni himself is rcpreseIllcd on
the disc by Ali, two pieces for solo viol a (Jennifer Curl) .
In the first, a series of rhythmic double stopS is eventually
tamed by quieter wispy sonorities, while the second is a
hyperactive display of bow and fingerboard v~tuos~ty. It
is a good example of the standard of solo vrrtuoslly to
whieh the individual members of Elision can ri se.
Sandro Gorli, the conductor of the ensemble, is (like
Brophy) himself a Dona toni student, although the piece
on this disc, Le vie dei canti n.2, shows no obvious
influence. The title is a reference to Bruce Chat win 's book
Songlines, and various instruments throughout the work
take the role of singer/songmaker in lines which frequently
become focused on a single pitCh. The effect is a mysterious
"history" of songs and their trartsformations, with the effect
of an unstated thread of continuity.
Mauro Cardi 's Effetto notte with its whispered tremolos
and harmonics, punctuated by things that go plunk in the
night, is a nocturne singularly well suited to the
characteristically glittering nature of the Elision ensemble,
with its special place for plucked strings.
Elision deserve congratulations for this disc. It is polished
in every respect and full of challenging music. May it be
the first of man y.
Ossia - Australian Composers
Volume 1
Music by Robert Allworth, Anne Boyd, Chris
Dench, Ian Fredericks, Ann Ghandar, Eric
Gross, Mary Mageau, Ian Shanahan, Larry
Sitsky, Michael Smetanin, Michael
Whiticker
Fellowship of Australian Composers, JAD CD1024
Total Playing Time: 73'29'
CD $19.95
Reviewed by Peter McCollum
The notion of a union of creative artists has always
had a mixed press . As Wagner some-what labor-iously
pointed out in The Mastersingers, the potential for conflict
between common interest and creative individuality is huge.
And in our own century, the negative example of
Khrennikov's
Composers'
Congress in
Moscow in aUSUALlAN COMPOSERS . VOLUMI 1
1948, which
a I m 0 s t
succeeded in
completely
ossifying
Russian music
for the rest of
the century,
has not exactly
encouraged
"'on
Job!"> 1.1!.Xf';I,11
l:>11r ~:"ky . M" ~I ...:1 ""n.""m,,,, . .'-1--"a..1
composers to
SOUNDS AUSTRALIAN, WINTER 1992
adopt an "all-for-one and one-for-all " mental ity.
Which is why the appearance of this first compac t dis c
by the Fellowship of Australian Composers, under the
energetic presidency of Ian Shanahan, has to be seen as
a welcome milestone, both for the Fellowship, and for
those of us who just look on, waiting for good pi eces to
emerge. The "Volume I" tag on the cover is particu lar ly
promising. Profits and mechanical rights accruing to the
disc will be ploughed back to produce future numbers.
Part of the function of these discs will be to present
recordings of a regular composition competition hel d by
the Fellowship. Taking on this role has allowed Shanal1an
to seek financial assistance for the disc from a Trust Fund
for these competitions, set up by Vernon Lisle in the
1980s.
The disc's collective origins are most obvious in its
eclectic assemblage of styles. The only previously recorded
work is Michael Smetanin's Ladder of Escape which is
featured here in a fine new recording by Nigel West lake
(in the version for solo bass clarinet and eight multi-tracked
bass and contrabass clarinets). Its placement on the first
track seems designed to capital ise on the fact that this
work has already achieved some penetration into the schools
market. In fact, this Ossia disc would make an excellent
replacement for the old Harry Spamaay recording in the
AMC's Schools Kits . Not only does it give a diverse
sample of Australian styles not all of which are well
represented elsewhere on disc: it also comes with a detai led
twenty-page booklet, giving biographical material and notes
by the composers . Two com-ments here for future volumes:
it would be useful to have a complete works list, giving
performers, titles, composers, dates, track numbers and
times separate from the notes themselves; and it would be
helpful to segregate the biographies (in the third person)
from the composer's personal comments (in the first person),
the latter having an archival value which it is important
to keep separate from factual material.
The appearance of Chris Dench's Celb: Violett (Laura
Chislett) for alto flute is a welcome addition to hi s by-
now substantial collection of solo flute pieces. It coincides
with the release of Sulle Scale della Fenice on a
Perspectives of New Music CD (PNM 29), a work with
which it shares some pitch structures based on Laura
Chislett's name. The structure and rhythm of the piece is
derived from the word Darmstadt and is the fo urth of
Dench's Vier Darmstadter Aphorismen (for solo flutist).
There is an interesting coupling of keyboard works by
Ann Ghandar (piano) and Mary Mageau (harpsichord and
wind chimes) both played by their composers. Ann Ghandar 's
Photophoresis for piano brings an impressionist aesthetic
to post-war styles. Mageau's haiku-sized piece, on the
other hand, invokes the orient in its use of pentatonic and
a rhetoric which struck me as not unlike some recent
Japanese koto pieces.
Pentatonic implications arise from the two solitary
pitches used in Anne Boyd's For E.G. for flute and piano
(Jane Lewis and Simon Docking) which derives its material
from the initials of its dedicatee, Eric Gross. Gross himself
is represented by a Romance, opus 177, in which the
spiky points of the mandolin sound (Paul Hooper) are
~ ;j..... t MU !
flicked onto a thick organ texture (Lawrence Bartlett).
l-.. r. :V1,lo," """1'I
I.. , 'Qr, !I :\I
The disc has another coded tribute in Larry Sitsky's
SOUNDS AUSTRALIAN, WINTER 1992
Fantasia, No.8 on D-BA-S dedicated to Don Banks and
played here by the composer (this disc migh t give the
impressi on that Australian composers have a positive
obsession with letter coding in the derivation of material).
Robert Allwonh's Splendour of the Past for tw o
mandolins (Paul and Adrian Hooper) makes the odd claim
that the piece suggests a "bygone era when more thought
and dedication was brought to bear by the artist at large"
although his piece is not noticeably more carefully composed
than the rest.
Young composers Michael Whiticker and Ian Shanahan
are both represented by early works fTom their output,
Whiticker by Korokon for vio lin and piano (Rotraud
Schneider and Daniel Herscovi tch) and Shanahan by
Arcturus Timespace for amplified mandolin and percussion
(Stephen Morey) alld tape, with sli des and light projection
(the laller omitted here, although I remember them lighting
up the gloom of Pitt St Congregational Church in an early
Elision concert).
The last track is a beautifu l surprise, Ian Fredericks'
tape piece Sunrise, written in 1986 for a visit to China
to help install a Fairlight CMI at the University of Beijing.
Even on my poorly-pl aced speakers, the invocation of
space as a compositional parameter through sound projection
was impressive and engaging . It made one long to hear
the piece in a big hall.
Songs of Sea and Sky
Music by Don Banks, Ross Edwards, Miriam
Hyde, Mark Isaacs, Peter Sculthorpe,
Margaret Sutherland
Nigel Westlake, clarinet, bass clarinet; David
Bollard, plano
Tall Poppies TP004
Total playing time : 60'38'
CD $26.95
Reviewed by Peter PlaN
Tall poppies indeed! Belinda Webster'S habitual
enterprise in the service of Australian music brings together
two performers of powerful personality with brill iant
technique and limitless colour-resource; Westlake has a
compendious command of clarinet subtlety: phrasing,
sonorities, nuances; Bollard an intense mercurial virtuosity.
The CD is sensitively recorded and engineered. It is good
to see acknowledged so many of the people who took part
in the making of it. Sleeve notes are excellent, with
photographs of composers and performers. There is an
idiosyncratic introduction by Don Westlake reminding us
that the bounty of Australian music we are now enjoying
was by no means always available.
The resonances of this collection are strong: its
retrospective character vividly invokes the joys and agonies
of being a composer in Australia.
One knows by now of the disappointments and neglect
that Margaret Sutherland had unjustly to suffer. Indeed
most of the composers of her generation were overtaken
PAGE 45